Author: christophersoden@sbcglobal.net

It would seem that pedophilia has been the focus of numerous dramas in the recent past. One of the hazards is attempting to deal effectively with this fiercely emotional subject, without coming off as manipulative, lurid or exploitative. You don’t want to tiptoe, but you don’t to stomp through it like Godzilla. Blake Hackler’s What we were avoids these problems. He explores the lives of three sisters, and impact of their father’s sexual abuse. Carlin, Nell and Tessa are close, their chemistry along the lines of natural order. Carlin, the oldest, is bossy and self-absorbed, Nell the middle sister, is the intercessor and Nell, the baby, is vulnerable, naive, less encumbered. When we see them for the first time, Tessa’s only six, and Carlin is beginning adolescence. They are squabbling over who gets to play each particular character from (the nighttime soap) Dynasty.

What we were hopscotches through these sisters lives, which is to say: events do not fall in chronological order. Nell tries desperately to prevent Tessa from joining their father for one of his private “sleepovers” in the barn. Obviously Nell understands the implications, but Tessa is thrilled by her dad’s special attention. Next Nell reports the abuse to the authorities, and Tessa is sent to live with a foster family. Over time, Tessa goes off the radar, requesting that her whereabouts be concealed from her biological family. We gather she’s changing names, to shut off pain, or perhaps her trauma has fomented identity disorder. Meanwhile, Carlin and Nell hire private detectives, trying to track Tessa down. After a number of false alarms and disappointments, Carlin gives up (the personal upheaval too much) but Nell soldiers on.

Hackler’s deep dive into this fragile, explosive material, is cunning and sentient, if somewhat obtuse. The pieces don’t fall together easily. There are carefully wrought omissions. The better to involve us in this not entirely despairing narrative. We see what each sister does to cope with the damage to their souls, the emotional wounds, the inexplicable betrayals and frantic need to preserve the grace of Family. The meticulous order of episodes gives them a nuanced resonance, an unexpected clarity that might be lost in a conventional approach. The details of their father’s monstrous behavior are not disclosed, it isn’t necessary. What we are given is witness to the fractured spirits of the girls. How they bandage excruciation and try to move on.

The cast of What we were (Lydia Mackay, Jenny Ledel, Jessica D. Turner, Benjamin Stegmair) manages to evince this story with understated, precise poignancy. There is an aching urgency suffusing their performances. It’s as if they’ve lived with this tiger so long they’ve pushed it away, but still heed the danger. It would have been easy for a show of this kind to have fall into the abyss, to blow up in our faces. But the mastery of these actors, and Hackler’s conscientious, emotionally intelligent script helps us past the rapacious predators.

Second Thought Theatre presents What we were, playing August 28^th – September 21^st. 2019. Bryant Hall at the Kalita Humphreys Theater. 3636 Turtle Creek Blvd, Dallas, Texas 75219. 866-811-4111. info@secondthoughttheatre.com

It would seem that pedophilia has been the focus of numerous dramas in the recent past. One of the hazards is attempting to deal effectively with this fiercely emotional subject, without coming off as manipulative, lurid or exploitative. You don’t want to tiptoe, but you don’t to stomp through it like Godzilla. Blake Hackler’s What we were avoids these problems. He explores the lives of three sisters, and impact of their father’s sexual abuse. Carlin, Nell and Tessa are close, their chemistry along the lines of natural order. Carlin, the oldest, is bossy and self-absorbed, Nell the middle sister, is the intercessor and Nell, the baby, is vulnerable, naive, less encumbered. When we see them for the first time, Tessa’s only six, and Carlin is beginning adolescence. They are squabbling over who gets to play each particular character from (the nighttime soap) Dynasty.

What we were hopscotches through these sisters lives, which is to say: events do not fall in chronological order. Nell tries desperately to prevent Tessa from joining their father for one of his private “sleepovers” in the barn. Obviously Nell understands the implications, but Tessa is thrilled by her dad’s special attention. Next Nell reports the abuse to the authorities, and Tessa is sent to live with a foster family. Over time, Tessa goes off the radar, requesting that her whereabouts be concealed from her biological family. We gather she’s changing names, to shut off pain, or perhaps her trauma has fomented identity disorder. Meanwhile, Carlin and Nell hire private detectives, trying to track Tessa down. After a number of false alarms and disappointments, Carlin gives up (the personal upheaval too much) but Nell soldiers on.

Hackler’s deep dive into this fragile, explosive material, is cunning and sentient, if somewhat obtuse. The pieces don’t fall together easily. There are carefully wrought omissions. The better to involve us in this not entirely despairing narrative. We see what each sister does to cope with the damage to their souls, the emotional wounds, the inexplicable betrayals and frantic need to preserve the grace of Family. The meticulous order of episodes gives them a nuanced resonance, an unexpected clarity that might be lost in a conventional approach. The details of their father’s monstrous behavior are not disclosed, it isn’t necessary. What we are given is witness to the fractured spirits of the girls. How they bandage excruciation and try to move on.

The cast of What we were (Lydia Mackay, Jenny Ledel, Jessica D. Turner, Benjamin Stegmair) manages to evince this story with understated, precise poignancy. There is an aching urgency suffusing their performances. It’s as if they’ve lived with this tiger so long they’ve pushed it away, but still heed the danger. It would have been easy for a show of this kind to have fall into the abyss, to blow up in our faces. But the mastery of these actors, and Hackler’s conscientious, emotionally intelligent script helps us past the rapacious predators.

Second Thought Theatre presents What we were, playing August 28^th – September 21^st. 2019. Bryant Hall at the Kalita Humphreys Theater. 3636 Turtle Creek Blvd, Dallas, Texas 75219. 866-811-4111. info@secondthoughttheatre.com

Hiro is returning to Kentucky for her younger sister Sophie’s wedding, after fleeing to New York City, some time ago. After watching her dad constantly degrade her mother, Hiro decided her only recourse was to find her own way, emancipated from the provincial Christian values of Louisville. Before she boards her plane, she processes the ordeal to come with her therapist. Her plan is to talk Sophie out of getting married, lest she suffer the same fate as their poor, beleaguered mom. As irrational as this seems, it’s difficult to blame Hiro. Even by Toxic Alpha standards her father is insufferable, so it’s not hard to understand why she believes Sophie is making a mistake. Still, the idea that you’d want to dissuade someone from marriage, simply on principal, seems to border on the pathological.

Once Hiro arrives in her old hometown, she crosses paths with old girlfriends, a high school flame, Sophie’s bridesmaids, and her colorful family. She and Sophie seem to be the only ones who are reasonably normal, though their mother seems less obsequious than resigned. While Hiro may be justified in her disgust, it doesn’t explain why she has neglected those who truly care for her. It’s not long before her histrionics echo her dad’s tirades, and we start to wonder if her conflicts are internalized. She seems to be judging everybody but herself.

Written by Leah Nanako Winkler, Kentucky is that best kind of comedy, one that conceives a narrative that naturally generates humor, instead of a plot that’s parenthetical to the gags. Like Neil Simon or Wendy Wasserstein, Winkler finds a premise that engages, that pulls on us, because there are also unsettling moments, clarifying moments, poignant moments, though the overarching thrust is to amuse us. Kentucky is not the sort of show that resolves every question or feels vaguely didactic. Yes, Hiro has her epiphany, but she doesn’t make decisions a lesser playwright would have chosen.

IMPRINT theatreworks has made Kentucky a submersive experience, with tablecloths, an open bar, a buffet and all the accoutrements we’d find at a wedding reception. It really enhances the large, convivial, ensemble cast, and effectively creates the illusion that we are guests, even though we know better. There’s a curious effect of lightness and eccentricity contrasted with a more serious subtext, but just like Brighton Beach Memoirs and The Sisters Rosensweig, the mirth feels organic and earned. IMPRINT doesn’t hesitate to embrace the outre’ or unorthodox, to jettison the traditional for the sake of surprise and delight.

IMPRINT theatreworks presents Kentucky, playing August 2nd-17th, 2019. Arts Mission Oak Cliff: 410 South Windomere, Dallas, Texas 75208. 469-729-9309. www.imprinttheatreworks.org

After 10 years + of writing theatre critique I have assembled, with the indispensable help of my buddy Roland Carson, a collection of my best reviews: Delicate Tiger. Ferocious Snowflake. with an introduction by (that phenomenal director) Lisa Devine. As you know (even though health issues have slowed me down) the DFW Theatre Community has a cherished place in my heart, and I am thrilled to celebrate that in print. Much love and care has gone into this book, and I hope you can join me for this event.

Writer’s Garret: Sunday, August 4th, 2019: 3-5 PM gen@writersgarret.org. 250 Majesty Drive, Dallas, Texas 75247. www.writersgarret.org. (214) 828-1715

This summer the annual Festival of Independent Theatres featured short plays addressing the theme of Coming of Age. The six I attended were: Leos Ensemble – small hours (Directed by Nick Leos) Lily & Joan Theatre Company – Marilyn, Pursued by a Bear (Directed by Emily Burgardt) Imprint Theatreworks – Dirty Dirty Night Squirrel (Directed by Taylor Mercado Owens) WingSpan Theatre, Co – Jo & Louisa (Directed by Susan Sargeant ) The Very Good Dance Theatre – The 1^st Annual Gay Show (Directed by William Acker; Choreographed By Danielle Georgiou) Audacity Theatre Lab – The Beast of Hyperborea (Directed by Brad McEntire). Some evinced better than others, though just as in past summers, each had its particular quirks, its peculiar charms.

Lucy Kirkwood and Ed Hime’s small hours opens upon a petite Scottish woman in a parka, huddled on a couch in her living room, not exactly spotless but not gone to ruin. This frail spirit is so obsequious she’s nearly lost among the various furnishings: boom box, coffee table, vacuum cleaner, television, floor lamp. She’s very still but she’s frantic. When talking on the phone (to her mother?) she insists she’s fine, though clearly there’s some intense urgency lurking beneath the surface. There’s almost no dialogue as we watch her carefully apply makeup, channel surf, watch news about a severe blizzard, drink from a bottle of coke. When a commotion arises from another room, she turns on a vacuum cleaner to drown it out. What begins as a kind of reverie slowly morphs as we see a soul lost in misery. It takes a bit to find our bearings, but small hours is wrenching. Meticulous in execution and implacable in its elegiac culmination. Barrett Nash is stunning.

Nicole Neely’s Marilyn, Pursued by a Bear, finds us in a mental institution, bearing witness as Marilyn Monroe is sequestered, presumably after a failed suicide attempt. She is surrounded by individuals (clad in black) who mock and torment her, often articulating her doubts, regrets and utter lack of self-esteem. They deprecate her, using words like: “slut, whore, stupid, murderer, spoiled…” As Marilyn settles in, she realizes she’s being set up for some crucible, to test her will and resolve to persevere. Her mother and grandmother, also relegated to the same confinement, try to help her confront episodes from the past that left her devastated and degraded. Marilyn is an admirable effort, though language, here, I think, is a problem. Crucial revelations summoned to exorcise self-loathing get little traction.  C. C. Weatherly is quite affecting as the tortured Norma Jean.

Cameron Casey’s Dirty Dirty Night Squirrel is a whimsical take on a day when a teenager takes grandmother on an outing to the zoo. The two are equally dejected, as one is going to a retirement home and the other evicted by an obnoxious girlfriend. Night Squirrel turns on the idea that unattractive creatures are far more intriguing and valuable than they appear to the outside world. There are marvelous touches such as dancing rhinos and the grandmother herself, who long ago learned audacity and the understanding that we’re never obliged to compromise ourselves. Loopiness of this kind is always dicey. If we consider comparable pieces like Albee’s The Sandbox or Mamet’s Revenge of the Space Pandas, any lessons are slipped in almost as an afterthought. When strangeness is the keynote everything else must tiptoe.

Jo & Louisa by Isabella Russell-Ides treats us to a conversation between Louisa May Alcott and the heroine of Little Women : Jo March. The two carry on a robust dialogue, reflecting on the widespread influence of Alcott’s most popular novel, Jo March herself, and risque’ content in light of gender identity in the 21^st Century. Jo was the unapologetic tomboy of the vivacious, long-suffering March household, given to reckless proclamations such as: “I wish I was a boy,” and “If only I could marry Meg.” Before the end they cavort in convincing male drag. There’s a sweet playfulness to the chemistry between Alcott and Jo, and a beguiling hook to the unspoken possibilities of Jo March’s sexual anarchy. We know, for instance, that the notorious George Sand, Marlene Dietrich, and Katharine Hepburn, were apparently glad to sport men’s attire. But then, they were also comfortable making love to other women. Which may be the problem with Jo & Louisa. It flirts and flaunts with the idea that Jo March was an iconoclast, when it came to gender expectations, but it’s little more than peekaboo. Nobody believes that all tomboys are lesbians, but Jo & Louisa seems endlessly fascinated by speculation.

Colby Calhoun and William Acker’s The 1^st Annual Gay Show is set in a pageant for contestants who all, in one way or another, belong to the tribe of Queer Folk. The familiar tropes of beauty competitions are here. The talent, the personal details, the dancing, the posing in bathing suits and gowns. At one point, a token straight man is yanked from the audience and conscripted. The Mistress of Ceremonies has a booming voice and presence to match. As the show commences and moves through various events, elements of pain and anger slowly emerge, which the MC hastens to extinguish. We’re all here for frivolity and light-hearted, camp hi jinks. Eventually, anecdotes of humiliation and deprecation are shared. Gay Show aims, it seems, for a juxtaposition of hilarity and pathos. If you’re queer, sometimes the best strategy is to play the light-as-air fairy (or perhaps the butch brute) leading us to scorn and merriment. But one way or another, it’s still about self-diminishment.

Brad McEntire’s The Beast of Hyperborea features an accountant who is horns-waggled into a trip to a remote island in search of a legendary monster. Like poor Bilbo Baggins, he’s not the least interested in risking physical and/or emotional harm for the sake of mind-bending adventure. Beast is a fairly traditional narrative souped up by McEntire to appeal to contemporary audiences. There’s a strong, able-bodied lady, who smokes cigars, and embraces danger with gusto. There’s a misogynistic, stuffy buffoon, a Baron proficient in the martial arts, and a Captain who’s more about canny nerve than bloviating. McEntire knows how to blend the touching with the fanciful, the astonishing with gravitas. While he sometimes seems to be winking at us, at other times his credulity gives this vivid monologue substance and humanity.

The Bath House Cultural Center presents: The 21^st Annual Festival of Independent Theatres: Coming of Age, playing July 12^{th _} August 3^rd, 2019. 521 East Lawther Drive, Dallas, Texas 75218. 1-800-617-6904.       www.festivalof independenttheatres.org

My mind reels at the logistics. Six actors perform different roles in what has to be more than a dozen different vignettes. The actress playing the aunt in one piece might be the six-year old daughter in the next. The actor playing a cantankerous grandpa will also play a furniture restorer in another piece. And it all takes place in the same dining room. The characters and their attitudes toward the elegant furniture and fine china change from sketch to sketch. How those six actors keep each character distinct in their heads seems incomprehensible. But they do carry it off, with panache and crisp, joyful energy.

Playwright A. R. Gurney embraces the dining room as a touchstone to explore family dynamics. Whether it’s a room that’s rarely used (appropriated as an “office”) or religiously set for supper each evening. The episodes are sequential, in the sense that the setting progresses chronologically. There is no connection between the episodes themselves. By the time we’re nearing the end of The Dining Room. Characters discuss marijuana, lesbianism, and other relatively contemporary topics. There’s a kind of audacity Gurney brings to this show, and it moves quickly, we barely process one vignette before the next one begins. Considering the topic, it would have been easy to make this drama cloying and quaint. But Gurney has too much respect for us, to indulge in pandering.

As I suggested before, this is a demanding script for the players, turning character changes on a dime. Director Stefany Cambra orchestrates this impressive cast (John Daniel Pszyk, Ryan Maffei, David Helms, Rose Anne Holman Dayna Fries, Ashley Ottesen) with smooth mastery and filled with poignant, introspective moments. So much of The Dining Room creates familiar, recognizable sketches, and daring choices. Cambra and her crackerjack cast move with confidence, fully involved, with intuitive pacing. This is a splendid, profoundly human, drama with memorable, and silly, amusing moments. Make a point of seeing it.

Resolute Theatre Project presents The Dining Room playing 14th-23rd, 2019. 11888 Marsh Lane (Amy’s Studio of Performing Arts) Dallas, Texas 75234. www.resolutetheatreproject.com.

A chilling experience in the fanciful, violent and deranged, Reykjavik is a series of episodes involving sexuality of same gender partners. Whether or not this is a commentary on the homocentric universe is difficult to say. It is set in Reykjavik, Iceland. Dark, frozen milieu? Certain thematic threads emerge. The supernatural. Violence and/or danger. Deception. Anger. In the first brief narrative three men and a woman (passed out drunk) occupy a booth in a nightclub so loud that dialogue is projected on a screen behind them. The mark (James) is about to be drugged and seriously abused. James tells a story about the disappearance of his older sister. The drunk woman declares that she is magic. And honestly, whether or not you’re looking for a temporary sex fix, on some level, we are always hoping for magic.

Each sexual encounter carries a sinister subtext, a lack of respect and frankness. In this regard, Reykjavik suggests other shows, such as Hello, Again and Closer. The difference is that playwright Steve Yockey imbues each episode with a fairy tale sense of the inevitable and secular miracles: the stranger forever just on the perimeter of your attention, crows watching a couple’s lovemaking and sending them messages. In several encounters blood, thick and profuse, erupts. A sense of improbable probability suffuses the play. For all its strangeness and chilling scenarios, it feels recognizable. The bizarre narratives are nonetheless familiar. Which, of course, only serves to get Reykjavik under our skin.

Kitchen Dog Theater continues to present remarkable, overwhelming, sharp theatre that challenges, surprises, frightens and delights. You find your seat and you have no idea where you’re going to end up, by the time the actors take their bows. Just like any other kind of literature, theatre that submerges us in the realms of dreams (hallucinations, the unimaginable, a mashup of intensity, chaos, dread) is a gift. A grace. Kitchen Dog is fearless and wise enough to make their shows visceral, not that the intellectual isn’t there. But so much of the dialogue, the unspoken feels cunning, implacable. If you are up for a sacrament of the broken, ferocious world. If you’re aching for a drama that is like no other. Do not miss Reykjavik.

Kitchen Dog Theater presents: Reykjavik. Playing June 6th-30th. 2600 North Stemmons Freeway, Suite 180, Dallas, Texas 75207. (214) 953-1055. www.kitchendogtheater.org

Consisting of two one acts by Caryl Churchill, Drunk Enough To Say I Love You? / Here We Go explores nationalism and the allure of alphas and how we process death, respectively. Explained by director Alex Organ in the program notes, the two should not be taken as operating in tandem, or a single context, but autonomous and distinct.

Drunk Enough To Say I Love You? somewhat suggests an S & M, B & D connection between Sam (a country) and Guy (a man). It conflates loyalty and submission with patriotism. We find Sam and Guy in a state of post-coital intoxication, when Drunk Enough opens. Their chemistry is amiable enough. Their conversation has the feel of young boys, extolling the exhilaration of battle strategies. Gradually though, Sam (the alpha) becomes more dominant. With an unsettling, zealous gleam in his eye, he pronounces a litany of specific annihilations, atrocities, collateral civilian deaths. Guy goes along as best he can, but whenever he interjects a note of humanity, or hesitation, or alleviation, Sam threatens to walk away. He gets angry. Before long, subtle elements of restraint, torture and degradation take over. Love is no longer about love, it’s about surrendering to the will of the stronger party. It’s about conceding trust against better judgment. Churchill depicts the withholding of care and validation from the dominant male as the means to gain leverage.

Here We Go is Churchill’s reflection on what it means to be mortal. (Divided into three parts: Here we go, After, and Getting there.) We hear guests at a funeral, gossiping and remarking on the life of the deceased. No one seems especially solemn, even when each one places a single flower in a vessel, and briefly explains the circumstances, when their time arrives. Then we watch and listen as the deceased gropes his way through the next realm after death. He delivers an ongoing, fragmented monologue, as he tries to sort through the sensations of his posthumous experience. It’s not particularly comforting.

Finally we bear witness as a caretaker dresses and undresses the deceased, surmising this is something he cannot do on his own. Each time the ritual is repeated, it seems to be harder and harder on this elderly gentlemen. A passive struggle, if you will. The caretaker hums a tune, applies herself to the task, slaps at his hand, if it gets in the way.

There are certain patterns in these narratives. When characters finish one another’s sentences, there’s an urgency, a kind of intrusion. One cannot express a complete thought before the other jumps in. Is there a need to connect? An imperative to hurry things along? In both Drunk Enough, and Here We Go, we seem to occupy a secular vacuum. Even when God is mentioned (is He mentioned?) He doesn’t seem present or at least sentiently acknowledged. There’s a buffer, an equanimity to events. Yes, certain points in the story are salient, but we gather this through content rather than attention Churchill brings to them. It’s as if she imbues the human experience with a different texture. The drama stirs in the unspoken.

Second Thought Theatre presents Drunk Enough To Say I Love You? / Here We Go playing June 5th-29th, 2019. Bryant Hall at the Kalita Humphreys Theater. 3636 Turtle Creek Blvd, Dallas, Texas 75219. 866-811-4111. info@secondthoughttheatre.com

How do I explain? The Play That Goes Wrong is The Murder at Haversham Manor which is a drama performed by a British touring company (The Cornley University Drama Society) and due to a series of predictable and unpredictable mishaps (the space larger and unfamiliar, the cast gets sick the night before) the production goes horribly, ridiculously awry. So (stay with me, here) the comedy at The Winspear is a play within a play, in which the actors play actors. And crew. I think. There are several ways to look at this. The previously mentioned problems are included in the program notes, so you might or might not know this going in. For those of you who don’t remember, Murphy’s Law predicted: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” This is just as good an explanation as any. Another might be to think of The Play that Goes Wrong as Frayn’s Noises Off without any backstory, to speak of.

Before the play even commence, two of the stage hands are out in the audience, shouting, searching for a dog that has, apparently, gotten loose. Next we notice the stage manager’ having trouble getting certain objects to stick to the wall, and stay there. At the show’s opening, a corpse is discovered on a sofa in the study, but they’re having trouble transporting it to another room. The door connecting the study to the rest of the manor keeps getting stuck. Sneaking around the parameters of the set or climbing through the window, only prove to be temporary solutions. One of the actors is knocked out, stone cold, so the stage manager must take over, working with script in hand. Snow is evoked with a careless toss of enormous flakes that are not even remotely convincing. At one point, “Chris Bean” who plays “Inspector Carter” implores the audience to “stop laughing at us” (this is, after all, a murder mystery). Which only makes us laugh all the harder.

The simple reason The Play That Goes Wrong succeeds so phenomenally, is the mad-genius script (by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields) with so many intentional problems, accidents and acts of God, minute to enormous. The mishaps are the plot! The cast’s dogged determination to soldier on is what keeps the action moving. No rational troupe would push back at such miserable misfortune for more than an hour, refusing to accept defeat. Please forgive the cliche here, but just when you think nothing else can go south, it most assuredly does. Lewis, Sayer and Shields have booked us passage on a ship that sinks for a very long time. Yet it remains animated and surprisingly punchy. I mean, it’s pretty much a one-gag show: 99% slapstick, like the poor salesman who doesn’t realize the dog doesn’t belong to the kid on the stoop. If only the poor “cast” of The Play That Goes Wrong could figure out that they’re doomed from the start, they might leave early. Thank God they don’t. And neither do we.

AT&T Performing Arts Center presents The Play That Goes Wrong, playing July 11th-16th, 2019. Winspear Opera House, 2403 Flora St, Dallas, Texas 75201. 214-880-0202. www.attpac.org

Written by Dave Malloy and three other performers cast in Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 (during a night of board games and bourbon) Ghost Quartet is an intense, yet freewheeling adventure into the depth of storytelling on the level of subconscious fracas and dreams. Falling somewhere between the spontaneous talent show you might stage among friends (when the evening lasts long into the raw hours) and the familiar barn show thrown during summer stock, Ghost Quartet is strange, playful, rough, absurd, melancholy and peppy as a calliope.

Familiar narratives are interwoven with each new song, introduced as cuts from a thematic music album (think Pink Floyd’s The Wall, or The Who’s Tommy) each one with a different attitude, angle, diction, and salient instrument. Imagery is used from: Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, Pearl White and Rose Red, Scheherazade, 2001 A Space Odyssey…. There are overlaps and repetition. Scenes that vary in tone and approach. The two men and two women we see visiting so casually onstage, turn out to be the musicians and performers.

When you enter the theater, the first thing you notice is the very comfortable furniture: easy chairs, sofas, very cozy and welcoming. A member of the theatre company makes a point of greeting you and putting you at ease. During the performance, samples of good whiskey were offered. (They could have started with the Maker’s Mark!) Instruments are handed out. Great care is taken to help us feel relaxed, involved, participants in the realization of the piece, a member of a small community consisting of cast, crew and audience. There’s a personality to the way each piece is interpreted and expressed, that feels notably informal. Plainspoken?

Ghost Quartet reveals a myriad of thematic threads. Ferocious bears. Sisters who sometimes betray one another. Alcohol as celebration and truth serum. Those who deny the existence of God, yet cannot get past His absence. As I have noticed in the past, IMPRINT delights in bringing fresh vision and unorthodox endeavors to the stage. If I have noticed a pattern, it’s the desire to actively engage, surprise, dazzle and entice. Ghost Quartet submerges us in the sacred, the woeful, the gleeful, the devastating and unnerving. Whether it plunges us into darkness or entrances with its penchant for serpentine narratives. Whatever touching, sparkly prestidigitation it may bring our way, we are in for a breathless ride.

Imprint Theatreworks presents Ghost Quartet by Dave Malloy, playing May 31st-June 15th, 2019. Bath House Cultural Center. 521 E Lawther Dr, Dallas, Texas 75218. 214-670-8749. www.imprinttheatreworks.org